Legal Question in Criminal Law in California

Re: Ineffective assistance of counsel

The fact that a lawyer does not obey the instructions of his client's girlfriend is not nearly enough to amount to ineffective assistance. Defense attorneys make strategic decisions about their cases and can go against the wishes of the client himself on matters of strategy if they think doing so is wise. The client doesn't get to decide who is called to testify, and nobody else has any say in the process.

Unless you are an attorney (and the fact that you posted your question on this site suggests you are not), you may not know how to decide which witnesses to call and when. A preliminary hearing is not an occasion for the defendant to present his case; it is an opportunity to attack the sufficiency of the prosecutor's case. Testimony of defense witnesses at the prelim usually does nothing to help the defendant, but it does quite a bit to educate the prosecutor about the defense's arguments so he can be prepared to counter them at trial. Thus, in addition to being unhelpful, testimony by a defense witness at a prelim can actually be quite harmful.

To establish ineffective assistance of counsel, the defendant has to establish that the attorney's performance was so poor that no reasonable attorney would accept it *and* that he would have obtained a better result had his lawyer been more effective. Your boyfriend probably cannot establish either of these elements, since there was almost certainly a reasonable explanation for not calling you to testify at the prelim and since the plea bargain essentially admits your boyfriend's guilt. Besides, the deal likely got him a lower sentence that he likely would have received after a trial (this is really the only reason to accept a plea bargain), so proving that the outcome should have been more favorable would be very difficult.

Entering a plea -- even a no-contest plea -- bars most arguments that might otherwise be available on appeal. Unless your boyfriend can show that he was coerced into taking the deal (and coercion has to involve more than the usual pressures involved when considering such a deal), that he was not adequately advised of his rights or that the judge did not properly find a sufficient factual basis for the plea, there is very little he can do now.